“We just restored an old bastide,” said Frédéric Fekkai, founder of the eponymous hair salons and signature hair-care products, shown with his wife, Shirin von Wulffen. “We’re almost done—we’re never done. But Shirin and I had the pleasure of discovering all the materials from the past that the house needs, all the reclaimed tiles and stone. It’s fantastic to keep the original fireplaces intact.”

Photo: L. Justen/PatrickMcMullan.com

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AD spotted actress and model China Chow in the front row at Jason Wu’s fashion show. At one time, Chow owned the Taggart House in Los Angeles, designed by Lloyd Wright, the architect son of Frank Lloyd Wright. “It wasn’t in great shape then,” said the daughter of Mr. Chow’s founder, Michael Chow. “The Wright family had actually lived there, but I didn’t restore it. To do that, it needed to be taken down to the studs. The person who I had sold it to had already contacted Eric Wright, the grandson, who had all the blueprints and planned on overseeing it.”

At a BAFTA tea honoring Emmy nominees, Mad Men’s Jared Harris, shown with his girlfriend Allegra Riggio, claimed to have had some professional experience as a decorator. “Actually, one of my first jobs was as a painter and decorator,” the actor said. “And it was really therapeutic, though they really didn’t trust me with anything very serious.”

Harris and Riggio at a reception for Emmy Nominees.

Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com

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The Inquisitive Guest encountered actress Julianne Moore—this writer’s high school homecoming date—as gorgeous as ever, in a booth at the Swarovski Elements event for Yoko Ono’s collection that kicked off fashion week. “Believe it or not,” Moore revealed, “I’m renovating again. Initially, we put the kitchen on the ground floor so it’s right at the garden level. The problem is that then your entire family is in the basement of the house every single day. So we flipped it.”

Moore at the Emmy Awards.

Photo: Andreas Branch/PatrickMcMullan.com

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British actress Jacqueline Bissett recalled growing up in a 450-year-old thatched cottage near Reading, England. “It looked like one house,” she said. “But it had been three houses in the old days. And I found a wonderful oven hidden behind a wall. Then when we opened it up, it was an enormous fireplace.”

Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com

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At Soho House West Hollywood for the Hatfields & McCoys soiree, actor Kevin Costner, seen here with his wife, Christine Baumgartner, described a novel way to infuse a home with history. “I usually create historic themes for the houses when I design them,” he said. “My house in Aspen was based on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps—they used to go up into the national parks with 60 or 70 men during the Depression, when everybody was out of work. So I designed the place with a camp in mind—including a bunk room, a giant mess hall, and a mechanical shop. I like to bring buildings to life architecturally.”

Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Actress Kirsten Dunst mentioned that she had recently redone her Tribeca apartment. “I absolutely love interiors,” Dunst told AD. “I love redoing and decorating. I’m very instinctive about design, and I wanted a place that didn’t feel too precious.”

Photo: Clint Spaulding/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, backstage at the Naeem Khan fashion show, revealed that she had restored several houses. “It’s a long and arduous process that has to be approached with dedication, patience, and love,” she said. “There was one vestibule that was covered in mint-green paint, and I knew that the houses of that time often had mahogany underneath. It was a very messy process and I took a risk; we had to sandblast it. But, lo and behold, there was the beautiful dark mahogany.”

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com

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At a lavish HBO fête after the Emmy Awards, we caught up with actress Rita Wilson and her husband, actor Tom Hanks. “Do you not know what I mean by ‘Oh, my God?’” said Wilson of their home restoration, laughing. “Our house is a 1926 Mediterranean,” she said. “And it was painted one shade of pink throughout. But when they were taking off the pink, they found two rooms, a breakfast room and the entry hall, that had the most amazing frescoes.”

Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Princess Basma Bint Saud Bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, in New York to speak at the United Nations, told AD backstage at the BCBG show that it is no easy task to revive historic charm. “I’ve restored more than 20 houses myself in Saudi Arabia and London,” the blogger, businesswoman, and outspoken supporter of women’s rights, said. “I love dark colors, royal colors, vintage colors. The bright colors should be left to the outside.”

Photo: Jonathon Ziegler/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Actress Brooke Shields, shown with her husband, movie producer and writer Chris Henchy, whose New York townhouse was recently featured in AD, explained, “Parts of our home were from around 1910. And then there was an addition built on in the 1960s, so we basically redid the 1910 version and knocked down the ’60s part.” Henchy mentioned that workmen had discovered a many-decades-old Goobers wrapper in the cement of a staircase.

Photo: Paul Bruinooge/PatrickMcMullan.com

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As we passed his seat at the Diane von Furstenberg fashion show, legendary designer Valentino Garavani identified his own favorite restoration project—his Louis XIII-era château outside Paris, featured on the cover of AD’s October issue. “Surprises? Oh, my gosh, yes,” he said from the front row. “I did it with Henri Samuel, and it was a pleasure to work with the greatest interior decorator. It was a very important thing to do.”

Photo: Leandro Justen/PatrickMcMullan.com

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In a courtyard of the roof of the Montage hotel in Beverly Hills, at a benefit for Heifer International, an organization that donates farm animals to needy communities around the world, AD spoke with actor Ted Danson and his wife, actress Mary Steenburgen. “Restore?” Steenburgen repeated the question. “Oh, my gosh, that’s all I do! I have a design store in Santa Monica called Rooms & Gardens, and we just finished our house in Nashville,” she said. Danson then added, “She’s really good at this.”

Danson and Steenburgen at Elton John’s Academy Awards viewing party.

Photo: Nick Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

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AD100 designer Steven Gambrel said he had restored four houses in Sag Harbor, New York, and two in Manhattan for himself. “And every one had surprises in the walls,” he explained at the Hampton Classic Horse Show. “We’ve found really cool 19th-century newspapers and shoes in the walls. Apparently, there used to be a tradition of putting shoes in the walls to ward off evil.”

Photo: Adriel Reboh/PatrickMcMullan.com

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, seen here with girlfriend Diana Taylor, former New York State Superintendent of Banks, discussed the restoration of Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence on the Upper East Side. “The kitchen is almost all done,” said the mayor of the Federal-style mansion he uses for public functions. “We’ve tried to take it back to the way it was built—designer Jamie Drake is doing it. And we worked to get period furniture donated to the city with private money.”

Bloomberg and Taylor at a birthday celebration for chef Daniel Boulud.

Photo: Clint Spaulding/PatrickMcMullan.com

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At the United Nations for a screening of his film about the struggle over the Niger Delta, Black November, actor Mickey Rourke admitted that he had, in fact, attempted to restore a house and lost the battle. “Yeah,” he said, flashing a weatherworn smile. “I spent so much that I lost it to the bank.”

Photo: Owen Hoffmann/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Author and photographer Kelly Klein mentioned she had restored a house in East Hampton, New York, not far from Grey Gardens. “A big old 1890s house—Juan Trippe, the man who founded Pan Am, had owned it. And we discovered this old model of a Pan Am plane, an original model, in the rafters. I put it away in a closet, and that is where it still is.”

Klein at an afterparty for The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Photo: Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who won an Emmy for her performance in the HBO comedy Veep, also is a restoration veteran. “It’s always harrowing,” she admitted. “But I love the process—I look at it as the unraveling of a sweater.” And did the comic star discover anything interesting? “Yes, actually,” she answered with a wide smile. “It was a big, fat money pit.”

Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com

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“We did restore a house,” indicated Jessica Seinfeld, wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, at a Target pop-up shopping event for designer Nate Berkus’s new home-furnishings line. “And it went really, really well. We have a house in Colorado, and it was a wonderful process to take things that are indigenous to the area, to use local materials.”

The Seinfelds at an event for her Baby Buggy charity.

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com

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“You couldn’t have asked a more apposite question,” Lord Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, said on his way into a BAFTA event with his wife, Emma Joy Kitchener. “We are restoring our house in Dorset, England, which is now covered with so much scaffolding it looks like the Tower of Babel in a picture by Hieronymus Bosch.” Fellowes explained, “We have three major building periods: the Elizabethan period, the period under Charles I, and the mid-Victorian period, and the builders can see it in each wall. ‘This is Elizabethan—look at this nail. This plaster work is Carolean.’ And we find things under the floor—lady’s maids’ scissors and shoes. But, of course, you also uncover horrors, ‘Bad news for you, milord.’”

Fellowes and Kitchener at the HBO Emmys party.

Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com

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At a benefit concert for the Azuero Earth Project at artist Cindy Sherman’s waterfront estate in East Hampton, New York—just a paint splatter away from Jackson Pollock’s old house—photographer Bruce Weber mentioned that his Adirondack camp was built around 1904. “We don’t really restore houses,” Weber humbly offered. “We try to keep them alive. We keep adding beams because they’re sort of falling apart, and we paint every spring.”

Photo: Adriel Reboh/PatrickMcMullan.com

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“I have a house from the late ’30s,” offered actress Bebe Neuwirth in the front row at the Vivienne Tam show. “It’s built like a Cotswolds cottage, and I think of myself as a caretaker. ‘Old house, old wiring,’ my brother told me. But so far, I only had to replace a roof, because it was made out of asbestos. If I were a billionaire, though, I would restore old properties to what they used to be.”

Neuwirth at the premier of Copper.

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Late in the evening at HBO’s Emmy party, the way the rest of us forget old flames, Lorne Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live, responded that he had never gone down the restoration path, but then resurfaced a moment later when he recalled a rather historic farmhouse he once gently spruced up. “It was in New Hampshire,” he said. “And we discovered that there were some stencil drawings from the 1700s, which we were able to save and restore.”

Michaels at the launch of Penny Marshall’s memoir, My Mother was Nuts.

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com

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“We live in an Edwardian house that is 106 years old,” mentioned actor Jim Carter (left), who plays Mr. Carson on Downton Abbey, and is seen here with cast mates Brenden Coyle (center) and Hugh Bonneville. “And it was a horrible 1960s dark mess when we moved in. We’ve made it very bright and light and lovely.” The nicest surprise? “We met the lady who had lived there until 1942. There are only three of us that live in the house, but there were nine that lived there in those days.”

Photo: Andreas Branch/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Television legend Dick Cavett, seen here with his wife, Martha Rogers Cavett, described the remarkable process of rebuilding Tick Hall, his beloved 1880s McKim, Mead & White–designed house in Montauk, New York, with the aid of family photographs after it burned. “My late wife [Carrie Nye] had the brilliant idea while looking at a pile of rubble, ashes, and a chimney and nothing else—‘We’re going to put it back,’ she said. And it’s so similar, people will walk into the kitchen and say, ‘Weren’t the colors on the cabinets different?’”